Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..

Lo-Fi View of a High-Tech Town

It’s a place with a downtown core that gleams with the shine of technological advancements. And money. The golden streets are straight and pothole free. Light poles track your location on the sidewalk as you pass, in order to provide optimal safe lighting. Dogs bark in harmony. Traffic lights are always green. And Bellevue’s happy pedestrians are more alluring or sauve than anywhere else on this planet.

Seriously?

No, not really. Downtown Bellevue is not Utopia. In fact, something that perfect-sounding is not only scary, it’s Brave New World scary. Nevertheless, much work has been put into Downtown Bellevue, either as a way to keep the commerce rolling in or as a huge marketing tool for the city. No matter how it’s viewed – Utopia or mid-sized American business district – The Core stands tall as the city’s heart.

But a recent comment from a reader indicated that the heart of Eastgate beats harder.

The dynamic neighborhood in the southeast corner was described by a reader as “the most authentic, historic neighborhood in Bellevue,” and that even Downtown looked the same way as recent as twenty years ago. On the surface, I think this is possible. In fact, to its unmeasurable benefit, Eastgate “still has its Dairy Queen” while the Downtown location closed to make way for The Bravern. That reader’s comment got me thinking of what The Core was like back in the day, and what it continues to be under the skin of marketing and hype. I worked in Downtown Bellevue in the 1990s, when remnants of the old city were more commonplace than they are today. In past articles I have documented spots in the downtown core that are throwbacks to other eras. While bits and pieces of the past still exist, it’s clear that with time the area is becoming shinier, taller, and cleaner.

But is Eastgate really more authentic than Downtown?

Respectfully, I contend that Downtown Bellevue is the winner here, made so by the sheer existence of Old Bellevue. Eastgate does have its charm – older restaurants, a righteous candy cane sign, and truckloads of history. Eastgate is also comprised mostly of concrete – of the type that transports people in and out of the neighborhood. I love Eastgate for what it has provided me in decades of living nearby, but have found more history and more character hidden in the folds and linings of Downtown Bellevue. The city’s lineage and progression can be seen in something as simple as a 70-year old building that has been rebuilt to current-day code, or a business that was around before the city incorporated. These examples are not unique to either Eastgate or Downtown Bellevue.

But The Core has more.

Last week seemed like a good time to prove my point. Like I had done in the Eastgate Walkabout last month, I walked around the older part of Downtown Bellevue with the goal of locating subject matter that – if photographed – could be mistaken for shots taken decades earlier. The best way to do that was to use a real film camera with a cheap lens.

The solution came in the form of my trusty Canon Rebel 2000, with a plastic $25 Holga 60mm lens attached; I used Kodak Gold 200 film shot at the ISO 160 speed setting. Using a fully manual lens on a mostly automatic Rebel forced me to set the camera to “Manual Mode” and shoot one way – with a fixed shutter speed of 1/125 (equivalent to the Holga camera) and focusing the lens by hand. I’ve been taking pictures with my $35 Holga camera now for about two years; it was the reason I wanted to buy the same lens from Holga Direct to fit my Rebel.

Photos taken with a Holga medium-format camera are typically distorted, saturated with unusual colors or light leaks, and are ringed with vignette – all due to the low quality of the lens and camera (here is a recent example from the Lake Hills Greenbelt). Essentially it’s a mass-produced chunk of plastic fun cheap plastic box with a shutter. Because of my experience with the original Holga, I expected that same lens treatment with this new Holga lens in the photos taken with the Canon. Oddly for some reason the shots came out mostly normal, but dark; they didn’t have the look of lo-fi love at all, merely as if I had taken them with an early Eighties point-and-shoot while listening to a Human League cassette on my Walkman.

Unbelievably, my low fidelity pictures weren’t lo-fi enough.

Turns out there was a reason why my shots weren’t filled with what the manufacturer called “Holganess.” The lens was made too perfectly, and consumers apparently were complaining that the pictures weren’t distorted enough. There is a Version 2 of the lens now available this month, with more of what I would expect from a cheap plastic lens. More Holganess. At $25 each plus nominal shipping via Hong Kong Post, I will probably get another one.

How funny that in a world which advances by the minute, some photographers are inching backwards in time by once again using film, or even choosing cameras that were made before they were born. In a way, it’s a backlash against technology – the idea that the world is becoming too wired. Many feel – justifiably – that using an older film camera will temper a photographer’s sense of the world around them. There is also the group of camera lovers – including me – who love scurrying for the electronics bins at thrift stores to locate something that doesn’t rely on an 840-Magoogpixel sensor.

Thankfully I was able to resolve the existing photo set’s “not-so-retro problem” by running the pictures through Aviary, the online site which has filters called “Toy Camera” and “Retro” to put more “lo” in “lo-fi.” The photos below are from my downtown search for the gritty nooks and crannies of a shining city; all photos were treated the same and taken in Downtown Bellevue (plus one in Midlakes). If you believe that Bellevue’s business center has gone beyond the seedy roots of the 20th Century, look again and understand that the past is still stuck in the cracks between the skyscrapers.

The original picture was mostly uninspiring, a grainy underwhelmingly dark shot of a bench in Old Bellevue. Zzzzz. Aviary woke it up and made it into something out of Alice In Wonderland: The Director’s Crazy Cousin Cut. This bench will now haunt my dreams until June.

If I ever get to sleep.

Old Bellevue Alley

From an early age we were taught to avoid alleys. The threat of dirty asphalt, broken glass, rusty nails, unknown fluids, seedy creepers, rats, and acid-poppin’ hippies were always a necessary part the legendary chants of our 70s teachers and parents – who all just wanted to keep us alive and out of danger. But this unassuming pathway off Bellevue Way is one that we must not avoid; this is the best alley in the world, made worthy by a simple product that brings young and old together in a sugar-fueled paradise:

Yes, the best-looking cookie trees and bouquets ever are produced in this very alley. At my office they don’t last long, maybe 20 minutes before the trees of frosted dough are picked clean of all their sweet awesomeness. While the above photo doesn’t really show the detail, “Cookies In Bloom” is written along the right-hand wall – in order to usher all sugar-crazed visitors who are beckoned from beyond the Road to Sweetsville.

“Walk towards the OPEN light son…join us…join us…”

Broiler Bay

Are you trudging around the south part of downtown with a cookie on a stick? Then why not follow it up with the best burger on Main Street? Broiler Bay was a favorite haunt when I worked for Gregg’s Bellevue Cycle on 106th in the late 1990s. The burgers are tasty, the fries are crispy, and they have fry sauce. Best condiment ever. The clientele is a solid mix of working professionals and high school students. The restaurant is a throwback in many ways, housed in a single-story Sixties strip mall while offering an All-American menu that lifts a one-finger salute to nutritionists everywhere. Why have they survived? My bet is on the fact they provide great-tasting products with excellent value. Let’s face it: high-schoolers wouldn’t be eating there if it was awful. Or expensive.

Old Bellevue Clock

What a beautiful timepiece. Like the creepy bunny bench photo, the original picture of this clock just didn’t “pop.” Retrofying the shot with offside colors, contrast, and vignetting gave it the unique look of an Instagr.am without owning an iPhone. If the cars in the shot had 20-inch long license plates, this could almost be Europe.

Restaurant On Bellevue WA

If you identified this building as a former IHOP, then you know your pancakes! After being an International House of Pancakes, this building sat idle for a while before it became a coffee house. I love seeing that it has been reoccupied and reimagined. For the record, the building looked like this back in 1969.

This is the alley your parents told you to avoid. You will find no cookies here. Only despair and shattered PBR bottles.

Downtown Park

Welcome to the alternate view.

The scene above has been captured so many times by so many people. Most – if not all – of the photos I have seen of the waterfall at Downtown Park are shiny, bright, and perfect. Granted it’s a beautiful scene, with striking lines that edge up against a tall epic skyline. On the core level, I’m thankful this parcel has been saved for the public to enjoy. I would like to see more unique perspectives and treatments of this space in photography, because many of the Downtown Park photos I’ve seen look the same.

It felt good to put this shot through the ringer.

As usual, the original was boring. Running it through the filters in Aviary gave it reprieve from becoming a liner in the back of the photo bin. I love the heavy contrast in the final shot, which embellishes on the cloudy Winter day in which it was photographed. Will this be in a tour or visitor’s guide. Nope.

Unless you want to scare them.

Do I even need a reason to add a picture of a Chinese restaurant? Ever?

This is the one picture that falls outside of the downtown center, but I added it here because the skyline can still be seen in the shot. Hunan Garden is on NE 8th Street, in the Midlakes neighborhood. What I liked about this shot was that the tall sign from my perspective was higher than the downtown skyline behind it. Old versus new, in a way. The “toy camera” and “retro” filters took an underexposed photo and made it haunting. The creepy distorted steam plume on the right adds to the dark ambiance. Thankfully Hunan Garden’s sign was lit at 8:00am, because without it the shot would not be here.

We’ve seen the shiny, and we’ve seen the seedy. Visitors Guides tend to overwhelm the readers with spit-polish visions of a city that exist only on the jagged edge of rhetoric. It’s easy to pretend that the city has no dirt, until you actually walk along the street and step in some. I prefer to live in the real world – one that defaults to the imperfect, instead of one that expects the flawless. Did I find the past in Downtown Bellevue with a roll of 200 film, shot through a Chinese plastic lens?

Only you can decide.

But I will say this: It was easier to find a lo-fi view of this high-tech town than I expected. Next week: We open the shutters again to highlight another part of this interesting city. Until then, Enjoy the view!

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..